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The roots of Japan's Indian curry

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Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#131

Post by cuteboy19 »

danans wrote: post #97
j45 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of Indian dishes have Persian, Mughal influences.

And it goes way beyond Persian influence. vindaloo ~= Portuguese vinhalo (wine/vinegar flavored) Southeast asian ingredients introduced via trading empires based in South India (i.e. nutmeg). Tomatoes, chilies, potatoes, all pre-Columbian American products introduced to India by the Portuguese. Tea (from China by way of the British) Coffee (introduced even earlier than tea via the Arab trading networks via Yemen duri…

Tea in India came by way of land, before the British

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#132

Post by grogenaut »

yakubin wrote: post #129
grogenaut wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mistake what I'm saying. Katsup is not spicy. I'm saying "you must think katsup is spicy"... it's more funny to people than saying "as spicy as water", "Man this catsup shore is spicy" just works better for a joke. I'll have to try and find the Kotlin extra hot at the Eastern European grocery by my house.

Yeah, I got that. Just wanted to expand on the weirdness of what "spicy ketchup" seems to mean in practice. Fair warning: "Kotlin Extra Hot", although a bit spicy, still doesn't hold a candle to what Indian cuisine can offer (or Japanese — e.g. wasabi).

yes but then I can talk sh*t to my polish coworker who loves any polish cultural references. Anyway thanks for the referral.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#133

Post by [deleted] »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #108
xboxnolifes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my problem with a lot of spiciness advertising around me (in America). When I order something advertised as "hot" or "very hot", 90% of the time it's either medium/mild at best, or just packed with spicy peppers to the point of just tasting bad. But it can be hard to communicate to some people when their upper level of spice tolerance is banana peppers.

> This is my problem with a lot of spiciness advertising around me (in America). It might just be a thing around here, but a lot of Indian or Thai restaurants have two separate heat scales, the 'normal' one, and the Indian or Thai one. One of the Thai restaurants that I used to frequent, for example, had a scale where 'spicy' was the same as 'Thai mild' and 'Thai spicy' would genuinely make your hair stand on end.

[deleted]

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#134

Post by dagmx »

notahacker wrote: post #130
dagmx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I meant Tamil Not Telugu. But the point remains the same. Curry in the British sense is not curry in any Indian sense. Kari doesnt imply a specific gravy dish, it implies a spiced sauce component. Saying you want a curry dish is like saying you want a cream dish when you order murgh makhani. It’s incongruent and a conflation of modern colloquial use vs the actual dish. Just like not ever meat dish is a ragu in…

> Kari doesnt imply a specific gravy dish, it implies a spiced sauce component So a bit like how us Brits use "curry" then...

No because there’s no dish that’s a curry. It’s a component of a dish. Furthermore it’s a very specific component historically pepper based.

This is the problem. You borrowed a word that you don’t understand the depth of and are now arguing that it should be used in your way when people raise what it actually means. It’s a co-opting of a cultures word and cuisines.

There is no dish that’s “curry”. The British generalized it to be all spiced thick stews.

Would you call an eggs Benedict “a hollandaise”? Or roast potato’s as “chips”? No because there’s specifics to a dish that you afford it because you’re familiar with it. Calling them curries and expecting that to be the actual term is ignorance.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#135

Post by [deleted] »

dagmx wrote: post #18
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3

Interesting! I take issue with the common claim that 'curry' isn't a thing in a 'real' Indian restaurant. I did a quick survey online and could not find a single solitary Indian restaurant menu without curry on it. From the fanciest to the common takeout joint. There are even chains like 'Curry House'. Let's tone down the virtue signaling in food reviews. It's silly. There are 150 languages in India; there are as man…

The point is that “curry” is a British generalization. Indian restaurants were historically called curry houses as a pejorative. India has many dishes that one might consider a curry, but we have no dish called curry. The only use of the word curry in restaurants is to appeal to British nationals (and anyone they spread their culture to). It’s an artifact of colonialism. I also don’t understand why you think it’s vir…

[deleted]

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#136

Post by rjh29 »

sowbug wrote: post #33
rjh29 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two different types of curry. The article/image are about Indian restaurants in Japan, which tend to have a large naan and a few small metal bowls of curry. The one you're talking about is usually known as 'curry rice' (カレーライス) or 'Japanese curry' and has its roots in English beef stew, but with spice powder added. It is eaten over regular sticky white rice, often with a pork or chicken cutlet on top. I personally lo…

Co Co Curry in Japan is my favorite of the second kind. It's easy to come close at home, as dole says, but the restaurant lets you pick the exact spice level, and they always get the rice just right: sticky enough to carve out with a spoon, but still porous enough that it absorbs the curry sauce. Go Go Curry is also worth a visit, and their US franchises are reasonably authentic. But it's a slightly different style:…

Go Go Curry is Kanazawa-style (thick almost like gravy, served over the rice with cabbage, on a metal bowl). It's very popular and lots of places do that style. If you like it I also recommend Champion Curry and Joto Curry.

I agree the rice is quite important. I've tried making it at home with basmati rice and it's not the same.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#137

Post by notahacker »

dagmx wrote: post #134
notahacker wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kari doesnt imply a specific gravy dish, it implies a spiced sauce component So a bit like how us Brits use "curry" then...

No because there’s no dish that’s a curry. It’s a component of a dish. Furthermore it’s a very specific component historically pepper based. This is the problem. You borrowed a word that you don’t understand the depth of and are now arguing that it should be used in your way when people raise what it actually means. It’s a co-opting of a cultures word and cuisines. There is no dish that’s “curry”. The British general…

I'm not arguing it should be used in a particular way. On the contrary, I am specifically not insisting that the Telugu speaker and his grandparents' less specific use of kura is incorrect simply because it resembles the mostly more recent (and seldom pejorative, FWIW) use of its British English cognate.

"Chips" is an interesting example to bring up, because the word means completely different preparations of potatoes in different parts of the Anglosphere...

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#138

Post by dagmx »

unmole wrote: post #92
dagmx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they know it. They don’t exist in a vacuum. That doesn’t mean the dish is “curry”. Just like how many Indians will call it Butter Chicken Curry colloquially but the dish is Murgh Makhani.

> That doesn’t mean the dish is “curry”. Is this supposed to be some metaphysical argument? The dish is literally chicken curry i.e. kodi kura .

The point is:

- curry is used in Britain (and any place they colonized) to refer to any and all spiced gravy, not just sauce.

- Kari in Tamil (widely considered to be the root of the word curry) refers to a dark, spiced sauce. It doesn’t mention it’s a gravy and it likely referred to a black peppercorn based sauce. It is simply an element of a dish like a bechamel. It is not a dish by itself.

- kodi kura is a specific preparation of chicken. Kura doesn’t mean curry, its closest English translation would be a stew. And even if it would be classified as a curry in England, it doesn’t change that it’s neither what they call curry or that other dishes that they call curry aren’t a form of kari in India.

Lastly, you take great pains to say that Hyderabad is culturally and politically independent from the British rule. So by that logic it wouldn’t even be a usable argument to say Curry is derived from those words

At the end of the day, the most well known etymology for curry is a mistranslation of the Tamil `Kari` where they mistook a single component of a dish to be the whole dish.

It was further perpetuated in the west as a stereotyped dish. Many Indians accept the word curry today because it was introduced into our zeitgeist but the concept of Curry as it is in the Uk has no foundation in actual Indian cuisine.

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#139

Post by nkurz »

rayiner wrote: post #35
Brajeshwar wrote: post #28

I'm not much into food. I'm kinda the "I eat because I have to." My disclaimer is that I'm not an expert but here are a few interesting stories that might be relevant to this story. I come from a place where there is a huge influence of the Japanese and grew up in folklores punctuated with Japanese stories. I got to know a tad more, when one of my school-friend took a keen interest in digging up British and Japanese…

> Also, most Indian Restaurants in India, if not owned, are pretty much run (cooks, etc.) by Nepalese. And most "Chinese" restaurants by Bengalis. Of course, the "Chinese" food in India are, well, very very Indian-ised. A great many Indian restaurants in the US are also owned by Bengalis. I visited a Bangladeshi restaurant in Atlanta that was advertised as such. The owner mentioned that most of the Indian restaurants…

For those like me who were confused by this paragraph as I was, Bengalis are a single ethnicity that is split between the countries of India and Bangladesh. Practically all Bangladeshis are Bengalis, and 80% of them are Muslim. Most Indian Bengalis are Hindu. A more complete explanation can be found here: https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-bengal-...

But looking this up still leaves me confused as to Rayiner's anecdote. Is he saying that many Indian restaurants in America are owned by Muslim Bangladeshis? Or just that the one you mention in Atlanta was? And is there a difference between Hindu Indian Bengali and Muslim Bangladeshi Bengali cuisine?

Re: The roots of Japan's Indian curry

#140

Post by n1b0m »

danans wrote: post #73
n1b0m wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, most “Indian” restaurants in the UK are run by Bengalis

Indian when referring to the cuisine doesn't really refer to the political entity of modern India. Most of those restaurants serve a version of Punjabi food anyways.

Why is that? Why did Bengalis start up restaurants serving Punjabi food?
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